Console Sales Bolster Year's Game Sales by 43%

13
Industry watchers NPD gave Shacknews the North American game industry stats for August today, highlighted by $8.02 billion in overall year-to-date sales--a 43.0% increase over last year's period from January through August. Home console sales saw the most drastic increase during the past month, with a 152.1% year-over-year increase in August from sales of $302 million, bringing year-to-date home console sales 108.0% higher than in 2006.

Nintendo's recently crowned champion of worldwide sales unsurprisingly took the top spot for North American home console sales, as the Wii sold 403,600 units in August. Microsoft's Xbox 360 came in second with 276,700 units sold, followed by Sony's last-gen PlayStation 2 with 202,000, and capped off by the PlayStation 3's 130,600.

Regarding handheld sales, portable game hardware revenues for August were $83 million, up just 5.5% year-over-year. Though year-to-date sales of portables are still well ahead of 2006 at $832 million, a 20.5% increase. Nintendo sold 383,300 DS consoles in North America in August, more than twice the 151,200 PSPs sold.

Filed Under
From The Chatty
  • reply
    September 14, 2007 3:32 PM

    Wow, the thrashing Sony's P3 is receiving is remarkable.

    I'm still not convinced they can recover.

    • reply
      September 14, 2007 3:36 PM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        September 14, 2007 3:54 PM

        I dunno, man, I don't see how the PS3 can catch the 360 given that the 360 will be constantly improving as the PS3 does and so the gap will remain constant. At this point, Sony is actually battling the 360 with its PS2. Does the PS3 even have a point to its existence in the face of this reality?

        • reply
          September 14, 2007 4:03 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            September 14, 2007 4:07 PM

            Ohh, you mean big titles like Heavenly Sword, Warhawk and Lair? Those were supposed to be system sellers. The 360 was selling well before Gears. It definitely got a boost from said game but I bet the 360 gets a bigger boost from Halo3 than anything else.

            • reply
              September 14, 2007 4:10 PM

              Uh, don't forget a certain title on the 25th. People keep saying just wait for PS3 titles but the other consoles aren't going to sit still either.

              • reply
                September 15, 2007 1:51 PM

                ya it's like XBOX and wii are not getting any games untill 2 months after MGS4 come out.

    • reply
      September 14, 2007 3:41 PM

      Yeah, it's really stunning. Around the time of the PSP release, the PSP and the PS3 were surefire hits in, I would imagine, just about everybody's estimation.

      • reply
        September 14, 2007 4:23 PM

        They would have been hits, cept for the price points. If anything kills Sony, it will be the fact that they chose to price their consoles at a non-competing cost. If they had priced the psp $50-%75 more than the DS then it would have been no contest. Same with the PS3.

        • reply
          September 14, 2007 4:35 PM

          more? pretty sure the PSP cost like $250 at launch... and the DS was $150.

    • reply
      September 14, 2007 5:42 PM

      The PS3 is selling better now than the PS2 did back when it came out.

      • reply
        September 14, 2007 5:45 PM

        That may be true--I'll take your word for it--but relative to the expansion in the gaming market that has occurred since those days and the fact Sony is now getting comparably a lot less of it, that distinction probably doesn't mean much in a business sense.

    • reply
      September 14, 2007 6:21 PM

      they're best chance for recovery is to hang on until the rest of the world is ready to move to an HD console. As can be seen by the enormous Wii numbers and the still strong PS2 numbers, by and large, people aren't giving a shit about the 360 and PS3. That could be 2 or more years from now. By then, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war will mean ALOT as the price points of the PS3 and 360 will likely be alot closer than they are now. I wouldn't be surprised if MS released an HD-DVD 360 SKU.

      If BR is winning by that point, I predict the PS3 will beat the 360. If HD-DVD is winning then the 360 will keep the lead and probably extend it.

Hello, Meet Lola